Content-Area Specific Resources

http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/best-practices.html


The ‘Best Practices’ section of the Department of Education’s website uses research based instructional practices to provide the latest teaching strategies in a milieu of topics, including early childhood education, English Language Learners (ELL), the psychology of learning, and many other subjects. Good teachers teach by exploring well researched, data driven instructional techniques and then applying these techniques to the diverse learning needs of their students. Subsequently, students develop competency by experimenting with different learning strategies they can then use everyday; they are learning about themselves, too. This website uses a collection of practices to increase teacher effectiveness with emphasis on data driven practices combined with up-to-date modes and methods of teaching.


http://blog.vcu.edu/ttac/AT_Continuum_Generic10_06.pdf


As a teacher it is both necessary and imperative to encompass technology into lessons and this resource presents a spectrum of technological methods – from low to high tech tools. Since all people have a unique way of learning and every school has a different budget in regards to technology this resource is useful in exploring ways to use simple, everyday objects like a Koosh ball and pencil grips to computers with programs like Touch Window to enhance lesson plans. Students will develop skills in writing mechanics, reading, and math while practicing motor skills through using these alternative technological tools.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pQAzoVJxdY


Us and Our Education is a documentary that presents a practical, hands-on approach to turning educational experiences into professional employment – the transition that schooling should train everyone in. Combining current technology and the arts, this documentary shows a group of students with learning disabilities succeed in creating a play and recording it to DVD. Us and Our Education is testimony to how teaching people to be as individual as possible should be an ultimate goal of the classroom. Students will develop competency by becoming aware that they can have an important job that matters through witnessing the affects teamwork, responsibility, respect, and making and maintaining friendships have on their own confidence.